ErikH2000
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2794
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Multiple undo is good, right? Makes solving rooms more convenient and pleasant. And if you don't like it, you can turn it off.

But.... BUT.......

With multiple undo as a normal part of the game, it encourages an extra-fiddly style of puzzle design. The kind of rooms that defy logic, and require tedious exploration of monster movement possibilities.

It's not good. And Multiple Undo can't be multiple undone! We're stuck with it now.



Back in my day, we didn't have multiple undo. Or even single undo! Checkpoints? That was the start of this whole mess.

-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

disoriented
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2386
Registered: 08-07-2007
IP: Logged

I would say that EotS isn't as bad as it first looked. I left the secrets until later, and even they weren't that bad.

TA annoyed me more especially because [even with UU] you have to rewind to a previous time clone to change its behavior, and then replay everything afterward again.

____________________________
34th Skywatcher

Best to PM me, since I might miss your message on CaravelNet chat.

ErikH2000
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2794
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

disoriented wrote:
I would say that EotS isn't as bad as it first looked. I left the secrets until later, and even they weren't that bad.

In all seriousness, I figure I just need to get better at monster manipulation. But it is a less rewarding type of puzzle for me.

TA annoyed me more especially because [even with UU] you have to rewind to a previous time clone to change its behavior, and then replay everything afterward again.

Ah, see I loved TA. It occurred to me that it would be nice to go back and rerecord just the clone instead of everything that came after it. But then you'd end up having something like a multi-track editing studio and that wouldn't be very DROD-like.

Did you try to optimize on TA? I could see how TA would be horrible for an optimizer.

-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

disoriented
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2386
Registered: 08-07-2007
IP: Logged

ErikH2000 wrote:
Did you try to optimize on TA? I could see how TA would be horrible for an optimizer.
-Erik

No, it was too difficult. I briefly had a #1 on the rattlesnake room, but that was done specifically while avoiding the time token.

PMIT did some incredible optimization and I have no idea how she managed such tight solutions.

____________________________
34th Skywatcher

Best to PM me, since I might miss your message on CaravelNet chat.

---

[Last edited by disoriented at 07-25-2014 05:43 AM]

Jeff_Ray...
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 962
Registered: 05-16-2005
IP: Logged

UU makes DROD too easy. We need to remove it.

And then we need to remove undo altogether. And checkpoints. And turning. And movement.

Actually, we should just have the player die every turn.

____________________________
I make Let's Plays too!
Click here to find out my LPs' progress, and find out what I plan to tackle next!

Currently playing:


My Holds:
-Completed:

-Work in Progress:

Banjooie
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1645
Registered: 12-12-2004
IP: Logged

I Wanna Be The Beethro

Schik
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5383
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

If my math is correct, we were much bigger jerks for having rooms like Journey to Rooted Hold : Twenty-Second Level : 3 North, Journey to Rooted Hold : Nineteenth Level : 2 West, or The City Beneath : Upper Lowest : 1 West, 1 South without UU.

____________________________
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals.
--Mahatma Gandhi

NoahT
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1133
Registered: 06-17-2003
IP: Logged

That's not so bad compared to playing through rooms like King Dugan\'s Dungeon : Eighth Level : 3 East, 7 South, King Dugan\'s Dungeon : Twenty-First Level : 1 East, 1 South, and King Dugan\'s Dungeon : Twenty-Second Level : 1 West, 1 South in Webfoot DROD with no undo or checkpoints. Personally, I never found TCB: UL: 1S1W to be especially hard.

____________________________
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

My stuff:

skell
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3734
Registered: 12-28-2004
IP: Logged

NoahT wrote:
Personally, I never found TCB: UL: 1S1W to be especially hard.

I think you either got lucky or you have some innate knowledge of builder quirks. I have wasted an hour or so trying to complete it the correct way, then I downloaded a demo and copied it move by move.

____________________________
My website | Facebook | Twitter

Blondbeard
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1486
Registered: 03-31-2005
IP: Logged

Don't know if your math is correct, but I would certanly think so. I've "only" played around fourhundred of the TSS rooms, but so far one of the strong points of the hold is that the kinds of rooms where you really wish for UU aren't present. I'm all for UU, but so far my undo-counter is set on one.

ErikH2000
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2794
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

NoahT wrote:
That's not so bad compared to playing through rooms like King Dugan\'s Dungeon : Eighth Level : 3 East, 7 South

Yeah, the Three Tar Momma room. That was so grueling to test when there was no undo or checkpoints. It's hard to imagine doing it without those now.

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

The spitemaster
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 354
Registered: 06-09-2005
IP: Logged

I tried it again. It was not as hard as the first time.

____________________________
Last night upon a stair
I met a man that wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish that man would stay away

Pinnacle
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1129
Registered: 06-10-2004
IP: Logged

While it's not as bad going back to it, keep in mind this room was in the level that *introduced the basic concept of tar*.

____________________________
Once (adv.): Enough.
Twice (adv.): Once too often.
~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5058
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Schik wrote:
If my math is correct, we were much bigger jerks for having rooms like Journey to Rooted Hold : Twenty-Second Level : 3 North, Journey to Rooted Hold : Nineteenth Level : 2 West, or The City Beneath : Upper Lowest : 1 West, 1 South without UU.

Ah, both my rooms. See? I've repented of my evil ways.

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

Moo
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 224
Registered: 10-14-2006
IP: Logged

Schik wrote:
If my math is correct, we were much bigger jerks for having rooms like Journey to Rooted Hold : Twenty-Second Level : 3 North, Journey to Rooted Hold : Nineteenth Level : 2 West, or The City Beneath : Upper Lowest : 1 West, 1 South without UU.

Doesn't even need math. The first of those is bad, and the main reason I haven't mastered JtRH yet. The non-secret version was bad enough... Second room was fine! (And decently-checkpointed). Third is just awful... I cheated past it..
UU wouldn't really help a lot in those cases anyway.

bwross
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 376
Registered: 04-17-2005
IP: Logged

Moo wrote:
UU wouldn't really help a lot in those cases anyway.

JtRH:19 2W is one that benefits a lot from UU... it's exactly the type of room that searching the tree is effective and desirable.

But definitely the other two don't give much in the face of UU... although certainly, JtRH:22 3N will for getting to the west entrance. For clearing the room, it doesn't help that much because the tricky point for most people is breaking into the top alcoves, and that they get stuck in a cycle where they can't make progress. So you can either search backwards to find a spot to try, or just play forwards and look for that spot to try. Making it pretty much the same deal either way, whereas getting to the west entrance is an attrition game, so there's a real difference between backwards and forwards (beyond going for low move counts).

That TCB room was the one I was mainly thinking about when I said that UU wouldn't help with Upper Lowest (but a weapon token from TSS that can kill Builders would be the way to go). It's too chaotic. Most of the times I've failed that room, I've been going along swimmingly, doing full cycles and feeling like I was going to finish it easily... only at the end does failure become obvious. My victory demos though contain things like being blocked for a couple turns, never getting close to a full cycle, or bumping into builders and wasting turns. So there really isn't a particularly easy way to say that a position is any good until the end... and since the room is short, you might as well just run around in circles and repeat it the six or seven times it will take to actually get a pass. Because you'll probably waste as much time if you're trying to think about it and search out a solution with UU. For a Builder room that UU works wonders with, you want something like Lowest Proper:1N 1W. That's a long room, where things can get unnoticed or left too long in the mess, but it's always easy to see when backing up to address something earlier is the right thing to do.

---

[Last edited by bwross at 07-27-2014 09:02 AM]

Timo006
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 518
Registered: 07-19-2006
IP: Logged

I just like the unlimited undo for when I make a stupid mistake and have to go back to the checkpoint I stepped on 50-100 turns ago.

I just happen to make a lot of stupid mistakes.

Sure, UU isn't exactly "needed" or all that "useful", but it's essentially an extended version of the original single undo, which is an anti-frustration measure for when you make stupid mistakes.

If you're the type that doesn't make lots of stupid mistakes or doesn't feel frustrated when you have to repeat virtually the same moveset for the next 50-100, you're probably not going to have much use out of UU, but I find it to be an excellent feature to reduce all kinds of frustrations. (Saying that it makes the game a easier is kind of an empty argument since room solutions, especially in later holds like TCB and TSS, require you to uncover a certain course of actions, rather than a super specific moveset)

Bottom-line: I really enjoy the UU feature, but that's just my opinion on how I personally enjoy the game.

____________________________
Drod Number: 3034; 8th person to see the Second Sky

enzi666
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 161
Registered: 01-05-2004
IP: Logged

As someone who started with AE, undo feels like cheating. In AE every mistake was your end. The 3 tar mothers took me several hours. Doing this was a milestone in gaming for me.

Now, I replayed KDD a few days ago with 3 undos. Took me around 20 hours to finish and the 3 tar mother room was in-out-done.

During those years a lot of DROD synapse building was going on but still. KDD surely isn't the same anymore. Sometimes checkpoints were far in between. You couldn't just make a turn to see what happens and undo. You had to know.

But DROD has evolved since AE and I can only say it got a lot better. I see it as something like a difficulty slider.

edit: most evil room design goes to:


____________________________
58th Skywatcher

DROD AE: Finished - KDD2: Mastered
JTRH: Mastered
TCB: Mastered - RPG: Finished
GatEB: Mastered - TSS: Mastered

---

[Last edited by enzi666 at 07-31-2014 04:08 AM]

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5058
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Yep, that's definitely the "Three Momma" room of JtRH.

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

Moo
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 224
Registered: 10-14-2006
IP: Logged

disoriented wrote: TA annoyed me more especially because [even with UU] you have to rewind to a previous time clone to change its behavior, and then replay everything afterward again.

ErikH2000 wrote: It occurred to me that it would be nice to go back and rerecord just the clone instead of everything that came after it. But then you'd end up having something like a multi-track editing studio and that wouldn't be very DROD-like.

This... Planning ahead has always been a part of DROD... But planning ahead of something that hasn't even happened yet, for positions of things you can't even see... Then having to do it all over again when that planning was one move out... Ugh. When you need to change what you did at the beginning, UU is no help.

Blondbeard
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1486
Registered: 03-31-2005
IP: Logged

Yeah! It appears temporal splits somewhat splits the comunity. Some love it. I don't, though. Exactly like Moo says: In a room with multiple temporal splits you may have to solve the same trivial room portions over and over and over. As someone said this is always easier if you don't care about your movecount. If you are willing to spend a few extra hundred moves things get a LOT more trivial. But that's actually something I dislike. There are some good temporal split rooms, but then there's those that are kind of trivial to solve if you just wait long enough, but extremly finicky if you try to be moderatly effective. Temporal Anomaly is an example of this. I found it utterly trivial if I just waited enough to get a 0 probability of any Beethro killing another. But if I didn't do that I would either have to keep track of an entire move-sequence of a Beethro I couldn't see while I moved the next one, or end up getting stabbed (losing) in a way that felt totally random. I ended up taking the trivial way out...

bomber50
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 872
Registered: 09-18-2006
IP: Logged

Elements can be used well, and they can be used poorly. Temporal split tokens are no different.

It seems hasty to me to completely dislike an element based on just a single hold. I feel I've come up with numerous great puzzles using temporal split tokens that don't require tedious amounts of replaying.

Blondbeard
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1486
Registered: 03-31-2005
IP: Logged

To be fair I did say there are some good rooms I know there is a lot of puzzle potential.

xitvono
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 55
Registered: 09-15-2012
IP: Logged

I personally am not too fond of temporal split tokens for the reasons others have given. If only there were a way to go back to change the movement of a temporal clone without throwing away all the moves made by the current Beethro. However I don't deny that it has a lot of puzzle potential, and that there are good rooms with it that aren't frustrating.

blorx1
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 920
Registered: 07-18-2009
IP: Logged

The funny thing about this whole "I don't like having to go back to before I recorded anything" mindset (which I probably subconsciously agree with) is that you still just entered a sequence of moves and having to go back 2000 moves to fix something is more work than having to go back three time clones that each did 300 moves. I guess it's more about the milestone that clones represent rather than the fact that having to fix things far back in the room has always caused problems.

To be honest, I would not be against a move insertion tool for demos.

____________________________
If you need to think outside of the box, then you didn't build a good enough box.

vinheim
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 300
Registered: 05-31-2007
IP: Logged

Do you mean like some kind of macro that reads all the moves you did upon stepping onto the temporal token up to when you actually switch? Sounds like a good idea. With UU, at the moment you die with the new macro input, it wouldn't be too hard to redo some moves/it would be less hassle.

It was only really a bother for me in a few rooms. Most notable is the platform moving one with the mimic and the eyes and bomb. Even in the one with 8 time clones in Arcane Laboratory, you don't have to wait too long when switching clones+it's relatively simple to get the concept and to execute compared to the mimic platform room.

Moo
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 224
Registered: 10-14-2006
IP: Logged

But with your theoretical 2000-move non-temporal room, after 300 (or any number) moves, you'd be able to see the current state of the room, and assess whether the moves you had already input were doing what you had intended, and if they weren't, you could retry those moves again. With the time split, you can't really do that, as the state of the room in the "present" of one clone is affected by (and sometime completely dependent upon) future clones, so often the only way you can find out if you've got the first clone right or not is by doing all the clones. I feel this is close to the "rooms with a lengthy setup where you have no idea if you've gotten it right until near the end" warned against here...

karlpopper
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 263
Registered: 03-28-2009
IP: Logged

Multiple Undo: I have my verdict now.

It definitely makes the game easier. I've just polished off a couple of secret rooms in The City Beneath. Briar clearing, Goblin slashing, and Tar cutting all go smoother. I'm not frightened of builders any more.

My 2c is that it makes the game easier in a good way: less stress, more puzzle solving, more Zen.

It's here to stay, hooray.

____________________________
76th SkyWatcher
When the only tool you have is a Really Big Sword, all problems start to look like Giant Roaches

lopsidation
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 176
Registered: 05-30-2008
IP: Logged

How do you add UU to The City Beneath? (Or import TCB into the 5.0 engine?) I'm looking forward to actually playing the last five levels.

____________________________
"Happiness is like a cat. If you pay no attention to it and go about your business, you'll find it rubbing against your legs and jumping into your lap."

Nuntar
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 4592
Registered: 02-20-2007
IP: Logged

lopsidation wrote:
How do you add UU to The City Beneath? (Or import TCB into the 5.0 engine?)

If you have CaravelNet, go to Change Location and TCB will appear in the list of holds, in alphabetical order under C (not T).

____________________________
50th Skywatcher